Freely Redistributable Software is Alive and Well

The first conference of its kind, this historic meeting was attended by a small but knowledgeable group of freeware enthusiasts.

I have just returned from spending four
days at the Freely Redistributable Software Conference. It was held
in Boston on February 2 thru 5 and sponsored by the Free Software
Foundation. The first conference of its kind, it was a real treat
to attend.

With less than 200 attendees, it wasn't a large conference
but I feel it was very significant. For those of you who have
attended Usenix in the early to mid-80s, this conference has much
the same flavor. For those of you who didn't,
Nerdcon might give you an idea of what I am
talking about.

It is not that the attendees were all Nerds but they weren't
marketing people or novices to computers.

Discussions tended to be serious and technical and the
participants had the knowledge to back up their positions.

How it Started

The conference began on Friday night with a reception. It was
a good chance for attendees to meet each other. While I didn't see
any important decisions being made, it was my first chance to get a
feel for how significant the Linux influence would be.

Greg Wettstein of the Roger Maris Cancer Center came over to
talk to me and said he hoped to meet Linus. I pointed out Linus
who, along with his girlfriend, Tove, were at the next table. Greg
went over, introduced himself and hung out with Linus for quite a
while. Greg commented to me later on how impressed he was with
Linus, for his work on the system of course, but also as a person.
Greg was not the first or only person to make a very positive
personal comment about Linus. Many, including myself, think that
his personality, that is, his willingness to listen to other
opinions—good or bad—is one of the major reasons Linux has
become so popular. I think that his sense of humor is another
important contribution.

A Full Saturday

Saturday offered a collection of tutorials including the two
half-day sessions I presented on Linux—Linux:An Open System for
Everyone and Installing and Running Linux. They were well attended
(about 30 students) and there were definitely some new converts to
Linux. While the tutorials were intended for Linux newcomers, there
were a few serious Linux users in attendance. The general
conclusion was that we had a good time and everyone learned
something.

The auxiliary meeting location was the Cambridge Brewing
Company (CBC), a brewpub with good food and good brew about two
blocks away from the conference hotel. Linus and a large group of
Linux-followers ended up there on Saturday night; ten of us
including Dan Quinlan, Jon “Maddog” Hall, Erik Troan, Donnie
Barnes, Eric Raymond ended up there for lunch on Sunday and another
group including Greg Wettstein, Steve Imlach, Tom Sargent and
Bryttan Bradley and myself ended up there on Sunday night.

While there were other important ideas discussed at CBC such
as convincing 60 Minutes that they should do a
segment on Linus and Linux, the quality of their stout was an
important consideration. Personally I would call it a thumbs
up.

The Sunday Conference

This was the only day of open sessions. The first keynote (by
Linus) and five of the ten sessions were on an aspect or use of
Linux. The sidebar outlines all the sessions and tells you how you
can get a copy of the proceedings.

Sunday started off with a keynote by Linus (after I had fun
waking up the crowd and attempting to make Linus sound like an
important mainstream executive).

Linus originally planned his keynote around being the Dr.
Ruth Westheimer of Software. With a fake German accent he intended
to ask questions like “Do you go blind if you program alone?”
“Is it ok to date different operating systems?” “How do I know
when I met the right OS?”

He then intended to continue by answering the questions. But,
that didn't work out so he went on to his second idea, “ Software
is almost but not quite totally like sex”. He decided it just
didn't have the same zing to it so he went on to present a talk
titled “Write Free Software, Travel the World and Meet
People”.

He said “Rather than writing a great operating system I
wrote a small, not so great operating and then made it free. That
turned it into a great operating system.” Certainly the right
attitude to take at the conference and, in practice, it seems like
he is right.

I personally found great interest in Victor Yodaiken's talk
about using Linux at New Mexico Institute of Mining and Technology.
Briefly, what he has done is slipped a real-time kernel between
Linux and the hardware. This had made it possible to handle hard
real-time processing (this is where processes must run at a
required time, not just “soon” and yet still have the utility and
versatility of a general purpose operating system running on the
same hardware. Victor has promised Linux Journal an article on his work.

There is an interesting comment in the conference paper on
the Yugoslav Experience that helps support the idea that Linux is
viable in an open market: “even though the price of pirated
commercial Unix-like operating systems is comparable to the price
of Linux, and with practically no legal limitations to using
pirated copies, Linux is being more widely used for Internetting in
both [the] academic community and companies.”

The next presentation was on Linux on the OSF Mach3
Microkernel. This fits in with Apple's announcement of Linux on the
PowerMac. Let's just say this was a surprise. Michael addresses
this subject in Stop the Presses.

Greg Wettstein presented a talk on his work with Linux at the
Roger Maris Cancer Center. An article on his work appeared in
Linux Journal issue 5. To condense a serious
effort into a sentence, the cancer center is using over 30 Linux
workstations running a custom-built patient care information system
using Perl and Tcl/Tk.

In the following session, Erik Troan presented a talk on the
package management system developed at Red Hat software. This
package, RPM, makes in possible to easily update an existing Linux
system. The bottom line is that Red Hat is encouraging vendors of
Linux software to use their packaging method. This will make it
easier to distribute and maintain software for Linux.

Monday I decided to play the role of student instead of
presenter and attended Tom Christiansen's all-day Perl tutorial. At
lunch we had a lively discussion of Linux, NetBSD, software
licenses, is Emacs the answer to the world's problems and all those
other important subjects.

During the afternoon I mentioned to Tom that I was glad I had
proofed Arnold Robbin's (excellent) Awk book before attending the
Perl session because of the confusion that ensues when I am trying
to think in Awk and Perl at the same time. This led Arnold and Tom
into a “which is better” discussion at afternoon break. No
bloodshed and I think they are both right but it was interesting to
listen to them. As I have been an Awk user for about ten years and
am just starting to work with Perl, I intend to write an article or
two for LJ on how I see the two languages fitting into the
world.

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